“Stay.  Ere you enter, tell me, my lord, have you news of my dear Aasta?  She has not yet been seen:  nor has our watch-wolf Lufa been found.  Alas!  I fear me the wild maid has gone off to Gigha.”

“Not so,” said Kenric.  “But come with me within the chapel, good Elspeth, and when the service is over I will tell you all.”

He gently pushed open the door and drew Elspeth with him.  They stood there, looking in at the many rough islanders with their heads bent in devotion.  The sonorous voice of the venerable abbot resounded in the vaulted aisle.  The cruse lamps hanging from the high rafters shed their dim light upon the bare stone walls, where branches of red-berried holly were entwined with tufts of larch and spruce and sprays of mistletoe.  The flickering light of many tapers shone upon the embroidered vestments of the abbot and the gorgeous altar cloth.

Presently the prayer ended; the people rose with shuffling feet.  Sir Allan Redmain from his seat in front of the altar looked anxiously round towards the door, as he had done many times during that service, in search of Kenric.  He now saw the bent figure of Elspeth Blackfell, and behind her the young king.

As Kenric, leading Elspeth forward, walked slowly up the aisle, Allan did not fail to notice that his sword was not in its accustomed place.  The abbot paused until Earl Kenric had taken his seat between Sir Allan Redmain and Ailsa.

Kenric caught.  Ailsa’s hand and drew it gently to him.  He looked down into her eyes as she turned to smile upon him.  Then from the choir of white-robed friars there rose the chant of the Gloria in Excelsis, swelling full and strong.  To Kenric, as he stood by Ailsa’s side, the words came with a deep prophetic meaning —­ “Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.”

And on that first early dawn of the new year, as he left the holy place to return to his ancestral home, he repeated them again, looking round him on the land for which his sword had won tranquillity: 

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace towards men of goodwill.”